Muse-ings

I found myself wandering this morning to some blogs I don't usually read, and found this: cafe cafe's December Poetry Challenge. I've decided to play along, although not all the way, since I'm posting here instead of there, but whatever. This is what I know about my muse.

She doesn't have a name--at least not one that she tells me--and she is a hopeless romantic, a lonely girl obsessed with tears and broken hearts, and I think she may be a little bipolar. She first crawled out of the pages of Little House on the Prairie and whispered that I could be like Laura Ingalls if I tried. She made me notice that equal parts of snow and afternoon sunlight made diamonds, and my first poem was born. She was with me when there was no one else to play with, when Mom was busy, and Dad was at work or sleeping off 3rd shift, and my older sister was away at school. My muse and I would play in the back yard. She would tell me stories that I never thought to write down, but still linger in the sleepy parts of my mind.

As teenagers, my muse and I would sit in my bedroom with the door shut, and she would hold my hand to paper until my wrists ached. No one understood us except the paper, so we stayed shut away from the world as often and as long as we could. Later, when I thought I was a grown up but didn't understand what that meant, she helped me to learn. She told me when it was time to leave the guy I thought I'd love forever, and helped me put myself back together.

For the next few years, my muse and I didn't spend much time together. I was in college and working full time and I only made time for her when she insisted that I listen, when she noticed something that I didn't, or figured out the answer I was seeking before I was even aware of the question. When we started grad school, we were both a little rusty.

My muse is a little miffed that I went looking for help. We'd always gotten along fine just the two of us, she said, and why was I asking all these outsiders to read my work? She took an unscheduled vacation for a few weeks and left me floundering for something to say. She was pretty upset when my first workshop poem got torn to shreds. We had worked on that poem for hours. Eventually, she cooled down and came back to me, realizing that the poems that had held us together during all those lonely times weren't the kind of poems I needed to be writing.

Still, my muse is happiest when I am at my worst. When I'm sad, or feeling sorry for myself, or so stressed out that I can't sleep, then she is there, standing behind me, or sitting on the edge of the bed, whispering "isn't there a poem here?" She still makes me write about broken hearts and lonliness, but these poems I tuck away. When I try to write something else, something outside of my own experience, or at least a little more universal, she still sneaks tears into most first drafts. We fight a lot these days. I keep asking her why she won't move on, and she keeps telling me I'm not ready to leave behind the themes that forced me to write in the first place. The problem is, neither of us knows how to write a poem about tears that hasn't already been written.

In the meantime, she's come to accept the plan that I created...the one where I flesh out family secrets and childhood memories...and sometimes decides to help. She whispers in my ear at readings, so that I stop listening and start jotting things down in my notebook. She makes connections that I would miss, puts two unlike memories in the same poem and makes it work. But she's lazy, and most of the time, I do this on my own. When she's around, poems feel organic and first drafts don't usually change much during the revison process. When she's not, I work hard to put words together. I make plans, take notes, and force the pieces to fit. She sits in the corner, smoking a cigarette and shaking her head. She says she can't help me if I won't listen.